additional clues:
lets put together what we have so far.
1 beach site faces west.?we see sun sets,
2 cave is 1 mile up the valley.
3 Danielle's hole is to the left leaving from the beach site.
4 it takes 1/2 day to get to daniels place.
5 when looking for claire Locke went north ,Michael went south from the cave.
6 the hatch is over a hour into the jungle.
7 the priest was 1/2 klick west of beechcraft.
8 boone tied up 4 miles east of camp.
9 hatch is to the north east of the caves.
10 beechcraft is east of the hatch.
11 beach site maybe in the SW area near crater.?
12 locke and boone cross a steam to get to the hatch.
13 they cross a bridge to get to danieles place.
14 arzt indicates the north wind blows inland at the beach site.he has a long shadow to his left,back to the sea.
15 there is an evening sun glow left of the beach site?
16 danieles grid squares are 1.15 x 1.15 miles on her map if they are latitude and longitude minute of degree lines.
17 if they are degree lines there is 69 miles between them.
18 the island is 5 grids N to S and 3 1/2 E to W.
19 smoke is seen 5km inland
20 danieles group goes left from camp,appears to travel around crater,crosses stream,follows stream up right hand bank ,travel approx. 1/2 day, finds old ship.
21 the black rock is on the highesr part of the island.
22 The smoke is seen centered the valley
23 the radio tower is near black rock
24 the raft leaves the beach to the right and goes out of sight behind coastline.
25 raft goes blows north along islands west coast.
26 the raft is 15 miles away when pirated
27 the smoke source is on a the north shore??
28 michael said the island was huge.
29 the oceanic sites map of the island has the compass rose pointing toward the west side of the island indicating true north could off as much as 90 degrees.

now, my guys here, weed it out if you like, respond here or there, they'll read it too.

I'm still puzzled by the inlets and true location of camp.
all the scenic shots point to an east side camp, that or we've been pointed south all season on the west side, the land was always on the left of screen.

Now, make my day and tell me that you are saving all this information in an offline backup? We don't want it lost in the event of a restoral gone bad.

drabauer, I promise that I'll help you with any and all broken links once we get our archives restored. I'm praying we'll get back most of what is missing, but I must confess that I'm already in mourning.

22 The smoke is seen centered the valley
27 the smoke source is on a the north shore??

Thanks, this is a lot of fun to read. One thing to remember - based on continuity problems throughout the season, it's unlikely the writers have put as much thought into the geography as you have, so it's hard to draw any conclusions.

The above contradiction about the smoke has bothered me since the finale. I initially blamed it on poor writing/continuity but

***possible spoiler***
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

there are spoilers of various sorts implying these are indeed 2 different smoke plumes. I'm hoping so because otherwise this contradiction coupled with the very different characteristics of the smoke would be enough to cause me to lose interest all together.